Ballardie, Anthony J.; (1995) A New Approach to Multicast Communication in a Datagram Internetwork. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Multicasting is a technique that enables a single packet transmission to reach one or more destinations or group. The primary benefits of a packet reaching multiple destinations from a single transmission are threefold: bandwidth minimization; the exploitation of parallelism m the network; the optimization of transmitter costs. In this thesis we investigate and analyse each of the different network layer multicast algorithms and protocols, looking in particular at their scalability, since multicast scalability was the primary motivator for this work. Our first and most significant contribution involves the presentation of a new multicast architecture and protocol, designed for best-effort, connectionless datagram networks such as the IP Internet. This new architecture typically offers considerably more favourable scaling characteristics than do existing multicast schemes. Our other most significant contribution is the security architecture that is integral in our new multicast proposal. It provides authentication of routers that make up a multicast delivery tree, and end-system subscribers. It also doubles in providing a solution to the well-known multicast key distribution problem. We also provide an analysis of the security threats to multicast communication, and propose various methods to counter those threats. One other contribution is presented: a proposal for ATM multicasting. This proposal is not a contribution of the author, but is based heavily on the author's multicast architecture and protocol. We therefore consider it appropriate to include an overview of this work here. As part of our discussion on ATM multicast, we also provide an explanation of why traditional IP multicast schemes are not suited to the ATM paradigm. We proceed to show how our new multicast architecture complements the ATM model. The quintessential question this thesis poses is: how can multicast be best achieved? Our conclusion is that there is no best way, but there are trade-offs to consider for each of the different methods, and each method has its place in the range of multicast solutions, just as each of the unicast routing protocols has its place in the Internet.

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